Slum Free India is A Possibility
Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister Kumari Selja said today that the chances of a slum-free India within the next five years is “not unachievable”. This was the goal of a program called “Rajiv Awas Yojana” (why doesn’t the government of India have names for these programs that the rest of India can understand!!). The Minister said “It is achievable but we need full cooperation of states…the target is not unachievable”. Until I came across this article I did not know that India had an “Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister”. Is there another Minister for “Rural Poverty Alleviation”?
The main goal of the Rajiv Awas Yojana is to “remove slums” by giving the slum dwellers property rights and replacing the slum with decent housing for free or subsidized rates. This is another one of those Indian government programs that has zero chance of success.
Rajiv Awas Yojana is very similar in concept to the “Just Say No” anti-drug program started by Nancy Reagan when Ronald Reagan was president of the United States. Billions of dollars were spent on a program that had little or no impact on drug use (now the US is in the process of building walls, fences and canals across the Mexican border to prevent drug trafficking. This strategy just like the “Just Say No” will also fail to meet its objectives).
Slums are there everywhere in the world including developed nations like the United States. In the US slums are called the “Projects”. The projects have low income housing and have a large number of minorities. The projects are known for high crime rates and drug trafficking. The situation in India is similar.
City living is extremely expensive in India. But at the same time we are slowly moving from an agricultural society to an industrial society. The industries are mostly in the cities or areas surrounding the cities. The younger generations particularly from the villages have no option but to migrate to the cities to find a decent living. The migration to the cities that is going on now in India is just the tip of the ice berg considering that 70% of Indians still live in villages.
How do we prevent this upcoming catastrophe? What programs like Rajiv Awas Yojana are trying to do is to solve the current problem and not the root cause. The root cause is that there are no job opportunities in rural areas.
Agriculture is extremely important for a country like India. We have huge amount of cultivable land (In terms of land mass China is three times the size of India. But China’s arable land is 125 million hectares compared to India’s 162 million hectares. You would think that India has the advantage here. Think again. China’s agricultural output is twice that of India!!).
So what India has to do is clear. India has to do everything it can to improve the agricultural sector. More output means more jobs and better pay. This has to be combined with land and property rights reforms in the rural areas. Today and average Indian farmer is at the mercy of the land owner and basically works for free (because of prior debt) or for food. This has to change. So the future of our cities and the slums will depend a lot on what we are going to do in our villages.
“Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium” – Cryil Connolly
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Category: News & Government
Nice blog,But i’m not having any hope that india is slum free even after 50 years..
Thank you.